PONDERING

Twenty Poems and Paintings

 

Good afternoon Joel.

The pond appears to be part of native wetlands which acts, amongst several other things, as regional detention. In short, floodplain/wetland areas are mostly required to remain untouched. My educated guess would be that these wetland areas could have become more 'pond like' with the construction of the roads that intersect them. The culverts may have slowed the wetland stream and created what exists today. (1)

 

 

Around 300 million years ago an amphibious being emerged from the primeval waters, walked on muddy alien ground, and began the long evolution that eventually led to who we are today, the status of the planet we inhabit, and to a pond on which ducks peacefully eat, paddle, quack, and reproduce. Here, too, is the unpredictable, the uncanny, the chasm between the corporeal and the dreaming human mind, on whose shores humanity "poetically dwells."(2)

Two famous ponds in Literary History are Henry Thoreau's Walden Pond, and Matsuo Basho's: Old pond / frog leaps in / plop! (3) While "the magic circle of Walden"(4) has become a tourist destination, Basho's pond remains an enigma, a koan to ponder upon.

"Water is also a type of destiny."(5)

If he looked into the pond today, Narcissus would see his image wavering in the water, along with a humanity haunted by its ancient myths of origination, even as its wizards see an Orphean universe in midst of implosions, explosions, and new creations. The pond records this, and its body ripples in all directions at once.

 

1. Matthew Johnson, Senior Planner / Community Development. City of Forest Grove OR.
2. Martin Heidegger quoting Friedrich Hölderlin.
3. There are many translations of Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizo no oto.
4. Charles R. Anderson, The Magic Circle of Walden. New York, 1968.
5. Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams. Dallas, 2006.

 

 

TITLES (LINKS)

 

1. One Day A Human Eye Opened
2. Sweet Scent Of Autumn's Flowers
3. Bending Around And Leaping Over
4. When The Earth Was Young
5. From A Secluded Pond
6. If The Path To The God Has Been
7. An Old Pond Dreams It's Dancing
8. The Gods Are Symbolic Of A Past
 9. As The Sun Rises The Shadows
10. The Pond Stretches Into The Night

11. Leaves Turn The Color Of Blood
12. In A Scarlet Cap And Gossimer Shoes
13. Grass Wears The Crystals
14. There Is No Pond That Has Not Dreamed
15. The Loc Ness Monster Paddles Wherever

 

NOTES (LINK)

 

For Susan.

Thank You to:The University of New Mexico, Center for Southwest Research, and
Portland State University, Department of Philosophy, for your invaluable support.

(C) Joel Weishaus 2025